“Oh, really, I couldn’t tell.” She stood up and shrugged into her coat. “So you must have been referring to your offer to feed me to the Chaunceys’ Dobermans?”
“I was referring to my calling you beautiful.”
“Yeah, what an insult.”
“It made you blush,” he said, smiling broadly.
“Black girls don’t blush.”
“Your mother’s white.”
“How do you know that?”
“Is it supposed to be a secret?”
“No,” she said. “But I don’t know much about your mother.”
“She’s highly searchable,” he said. “And you did blush.”
“I was embarrassed,” she said. “For you.” She pulled her thick braid out of the collar of her coat.
“So anyway,” Diego said, “I still don’t have a topic.”
“I’ve already given you several topics.”
“Several?”
“Several. And what have you given me? A conspiracy theory about Sherry Potter’s disappearance.”
“She’s still missing.”
Imani reached for the door handle behind her. “Yeah, well, this whole collaboration is off unless you give me something I can use.”
Diego rolled his eyes upward. “Do you really want to write about my mother?” he asked.
Imani kept her hand on the door handle. “Depends on what you tell me. A lot of people think she’s a crackpot.”
“So now you’re insulting my mother.”
“Well, she does dress like a vampire.”
“You dress like a clamdigger.”
“Thank you,” Imani said. “And it’s clammer.”
“Of course,” he said. “My mistake.”
“I’ll pick the next meeting place,” she said.
“Okay, clammer.”
Imani searched for an equivalent comeback but nothing came to mind, other than “twit,” which, in retrospect, she had to agree was inadequate. “Let’s not do cutesy nicknames,” she said.
Diego was cocking his head to the side as he looked at her, appraisingly. “Do you ever wear your hair down?”
“Do I ever—” She stopped herself when she realized he was probably messing with her again. “No,” she revised. Then she opened the door and went inside.
Through the door, she could hear his laughter for a moment, then the hum of his scooter as it carried him away.
14. “we”
ON MONDAY MORNING, there was a note in Imani’s locker.
The Chaos Foundation cannot be described with mere words. It must be experienced live. If you’re game, come to Abate Hall at St. James College at 10 on Wednesday night. It’s an eyeball-free zone. Notice I didn’t say “safe zone.” I’m learning. Oh, and sorry I made that comment about your hair, but you had it coming.
Diego L., Chaos Facilitator
When Imani looked up from the note, her classmates were filing past her on their way to homeroom. She put the note in her pocket, closed her locker, and went straight to the principal’s office.
Ms. Wheeler read the note while Imani stood in her doorway. The late bell rang. “Don’t worry about homeroom,” Ms. Wheeler said. “I’ll get you excused. Come in and close the door.”
Imani did as she was told and sat down.
Ms. Wheeler put the note on her desk, unfurled her tap pad, and started typing. “It doesn’t look like they have a website.”
“Maybe it’s an alias?” Imani ventured.
Ms. Wheeler’s specs flashed with data as she typed. “Yeah, all I’m getting are some references to an Isaac Asimov novel.” She blinked away her display to look at Imani. “Is he into science fiction? Don’t tell me I’m going to have to read Isaac Asimov.”
Imani shrugged. “I don’t really know what he’s into.”
Ms. Wheeler examined the note. “Chaos facilitator,” she said. “I don’t like the sound of that. Is it a student group? Do you know if any adults are involved?”
“All I know is that this other girl is involved. Someone I’ve never seen before. I didn’t get her name, but she has black-and-white-striped hair.”
“A high school girl?”
“I’m not sure,” Imani said. “Maybe college?”
Ms. Wheeler looked suspicious. “And how exactly did you meet this girl?”
Imani hesitated. She hadn’t intended to tell Ms. Wheeler about the incident in the dunes. Soliciting information from an unscored was one thing. Nearly getting arrested was something else. But Ms. Wheeler seemed to know she was withholding something, and Imani didn’t want to squander the trust she’d already established with her.
“Diego took me to Chauncey Beach this weekend,” she said finally. “And we sort of got chased out of the dunes.”
“Chased?” Ms. Wheeler looked worried. “By whom? By the police?”
Imani shook her head. “Just the beach rangers.” She went on to tell Ms. Wheeler the whole story, including her tentative theory that Diego and his friends might have set the fire for the purpose of drawing out the rangers.
“This girl with the black-and-white hair,” Imani said. “She was on her cell with someone, and she said, ‘Wheels are turning.’ ”
“Wheels are turning.” Ms. Wheeler sat back in her chair and swiveled.
“Yeah,” Imani continued. “And she told Diego not to be late for that meeting on Wednesday.”
Ms. Wheeler looked at the note again. “This meeting at St. James College?”
Imani nodded. She could tell by Ms. Wheeler’s close attention to her every word that she had delivered something potentially useful. “What do you think it is?” she asked.
Ms. Wheeler inspected the note. “I’d hate to even speculate,” she said.
“Well, I’ll pay close attention at the meeting,” Imani promised.
“Oh, no.” Ms. Wheeler shook her head. “I don’t want you anywhere near that meeting. You’ve done enough already. You just leave this with me.”
“But I thought—”
Another shake of Ms. Wheeler’s head concluded the discussion. Imani wanted to appeal, but Ms. Wheeler rose and opened the door. “Sally,” she said to Mrs. Bronson, standing behind the reception desk. “Get Pulaski for me, will you?”
Mrs. Bronson nodded.
Imani got up and went to the door. “Is that Chief Pulaski?”
Ms. Wheeler waved a finger at her. “Let’s just keep this quiet,” she said. “Don’t bring up the subject with Diego again, okay? Let them have their meeting. We’ll take it from here.”
“We?” Imani asked.
In place of an answer, Ms. Wheeler offered a warm smile. “Well done, Imani. This could be extremely useful.” She held up the note. “And I’m sure you’ll be rewarded for it.”
Imani’s mood soared. “Really? You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” Ms. Wheeler was already walking back to her desk. “Shut the door on your way out, will you?”
Imani stood and watched her for a moment longer, wanting to soak up the promise of a reward from Score Corp, but Ms. Wheeler had disappeared once again behind the flashing lights of her specs.
“We’re talking about the collapse of the middle class,” Mr. Carol said. He was especially riled up that day, sitting on top of the desk that divided the scored from the unscored, his elbows resting on his knees. The weekend must have recharged his outrage battery, Imani thought.
“The American dream was never about getting rich,” he said. “It was about poor people coming here to be middle class. A decent home, a good education for your kids, a vacation once a year. Not mansions. Not phony paper wealth. But basic stuff. Basic, attainable stuff. There was room for everyone to achieve nearly middle class status, but that wasn’t good enough. People wanted more, so they bought into the fantasy, the Ponzi scheme. It was a great big bubble and when it burst, everybody suffered. But not equally.” He held up a warning finger. “Those still holding on to their bit of hot air, their measure of paper wealth, clung wi
th all their might.” He took a breath, then changed tacks. “Okay. Let’s get back to economics. We’ve covered the three Bs: bubbles, busts, and bailouts. Now I want you to go back to the last century, before the three Bs, and talk to me about the structural economic differences between then and now. How about somebody new? Trina?” He looked at the one unscored girl who never said a word. “Anything, Trina?”
Trina’s mouth fell open, and she took a few visible breaths. “Yeah, it was different,” she said.
Mr. Carol leaned forward, waiting for more, but Trina was empty.
“Was it really so different?” Priscilla asked.
“I’m talking turn of the century,” Mr. Carol said. “I’m talking 2000 and before.”
“Yeah, I know,” Priscilla said. “But it’s not as if everyone was middle class, right? I mean, there were poor people and rich people, weren’t there?”
Mr. Carol nodded. “That’s true. So, has anything changed between now and then?”
“Of course,” Rachel said. “We have the score.”
“Let’s leave the score out of it for now,” Mr. Carol said. “We’ll come back to it, but I want to focus on economics here. What happened when the middle class collapsed?”
“Standard of living declined,” Clarissa said. “Poverty rates increased.”
“Yes,” Mr. Carol said. “What else?”
Imani could tell that he was angling for something. He kept glancing at Diego. But Mr. Carol’s star student was distracted, staring into the center of the circle of desks. Occasionally, Diego’s eye would flick up to Imani. Imani would catch these moments out of the corner of her eye and turn her body farther away from him.
“Okay, guys,” Mr. Carol prodded. “What happens to a society that loses its upward mobility?”
“It stagnates?” Logan offered.
“Does it?” Mr. Carol pressed.
Imani was only half listening. Her focus alternated between Diego’s roaming eye and her conversation with Ms. Wheeler. A part of her felt guilty for ratting out Diego and his Chaos Foundation, while the other part reveled in the possibility of a sudden score boost.
“Come on, guys,” Mr. Carol said.
Imani could no longer take his whining or the denseness of her fellow students. “It doesn’t stagnate,” she said. “It becomes unstable.”
“Very good,” Mr. Carol said. “And why is that?”
Imani had written a paper on the subject the previous semester, putting herself in the shoes of her grandparents, who had endured such rapid reversals of fortune. “Well, you had falling wages, rising unemployment, bankruptcies, strained government services, crumbling infrastructure.”
“And contrasted with all of this?” Mr. Carol asked.
“A major concentration of wealth,” Imani said. “The New Golden Age.” It had been the title of her paper. Mr. Carol had given her an A, and had written practically a dissertation on the backs of all the pages. When he’d run out of space, he’d emailed her the rest of his comments.
“Okay, Rachel,” Mr. Carol said. “Now talk to me about what happens next and why.”
“What do you mean?” Rachel said, looking panicked.
While Mr. Carol prodded Rachel, Imani went back to glancing at Diego, whom she noticed was still glancing at her.
“Your earlier comment about the score,” Mr. Carol said to Rachel. “What’s the relation between it and what Imani has just described?”
Rachel tapped her pen against her teeth.
Frustrated, Mr. Carol turned to Priscilla, but Priscilla only shrugged.
“Logan?” Mr. Carol pressed.
“Don’t know,” he said.
“I’m looking for causal links, folks,” Mr. Carol said.
Imani tried to stay focused on what Mr. Carol was saying, but Diego worried her now. Did he know she turned him in to Ms. Wheeler and her mysterious “we”? Was he trying to intimidate her with these furtive glances?
“Come on, folks. I’m trying to get you to connect the dots here. Imani? Diego?”
Diego fidgeted in his chair as if suddenly waking up, but, uncharacteristically, he had nothing to say.
“It created the conditions for the score,” Imani said.
“Thank you,” Mr. Carol said. “How?”
“Because the American dream was dead,” she said. “There was no upward mobility anymore. The division between rich and poor had hardened. Society had become almost like …” She searched for the right word.
“Like a banana republic?” Diego ventured.
Though she couldn’t entirely disagree, it irritated Imani to have her sentence finished, especially by him. “I was going to say like a caste system.”
“Right,” Diego said. “Then Score Corp comes along and claims to restore upward mobility.”
“Excuse me,” Logan said. “It doesn’t just claim to restore upward mobility. It actually does restore upward mobility.”
“For some,” Rachel said.
“For the worthy,” Logan added.
Rachel threw her head back in laughter.
“No, he’s right,” Diego said. “The score basically restores the American dream by giving people the opportunity to ascend.”
“Excuse me?” Rachel said.
“It’s true,” Diego said. “No matter who you are or where you come from, you have the same chances with the score as anybody else. Fitness has nothing to do with money. Look at Chiara Hislop and Alejandro Vidal. They weren’t born rich, but they’re going to end up that way.”
Imani’s mouth dropped open. Not only was Diego, a rich kid, speaking openly and without embarrassment about money, but he had taken her idea and was making an eloquent case out of it.
Mr. Carol beamed. “I see somebody’s been working on his final essay. Nice angle, Diego.”
“I’m sorry,” Imani said. “Is Diego actually arguing that the score is an antidote to the caste system?”
“Yes, Diego is,” Diego said.
Imani kept her eyes on Mr. Carol. “Well, he’s completely wrong. The score merely replaces one caste system with another.”
Mr. Carol grew excited. “How so?” he asked. Imani knew that nothing thrilled him more than to see two students carving each other up, on topic.
“Well, I don’t know how Diego defines a caste system,” Imani said, “but I think when you divide people up into score gangs and prevent all contact between them, you’re basically dealing with a caste system.”
“It’s not a caste system,” Diego said. “It’s a meritocracy … with borders.”
Logan laughed. “I like that. No, seriously. For once, Landis is right.”
“Semantics,” Imani said. “It’s a caste system.”
“It’s a meritocracy,” Diego said. “If you work hard and live according to the rules of fitness, you can ascend. If you don’t, you have only yourself to blame.”
“Yup,” Logan said.
“The score empowers people to change,” Diego said. He looked right at Imani as he threw her words back at her. “That’s the whole philosophy behind the score,” he continued. “A more perfect humanity through technology, which, it turns out, is not about mind control and world domination. It’s actually about fairness.”
The bell put a period at the end of Diego’s sentence, preventing Imani’s rebuttal. As everyone filed out, Mr. Carol congratulated Imani and Diego on their embrace of the opposing points of view.
“That right there is the height of intellectual maturity,” he said to his retreating students. “And I’d like to see more of it in this class. I expect to see more of it in your final papers. Okay?”
His students kept walking.
“I know you can hear me!” he said.
Imani and Diego were the last out of the room.
“They heard you,” Imani said.
Mr. Carol grabbed his coffee mug and flopped behind his desk. “It won’t make a dime’s worth of difference.” He put his feet up, uncurled his beat-up scroll, and got lost
in the Internet.
As Diego passed Imani, he said: “Meritocracy.”
“Caste system,” she said to his retreating back.
“It’s both,” Mr. Carol said. “Run with it.”
“You think?” Imani asked.
He nodded over the rim of his mug. “The Otis people will love it.”
During study period, Imani went to the school library, grabbed a tablet, and began searching. History was filled with caste systems, from the complex Hindu and Indian systems to the two-tier ancient Japanese system of samurai versus everyone else.
After half an hour, Imani was sure she had a topic for her Otis essay. She’d never thought of score gangs as a caste system before, but her argument with Diego in class had convinced her that she was on to something. Critiquing the score from a global historical context would lend the essay depth and substance.
Trolling through stories of the Korean baekjeong or the kahunas of Hawaii, Imani saw that humans had been mistreating each other in the same ways for thousands of years. And they weren’t secretive about it either. They left lots of evidence. From the globe-spanning malfeasance of the slave trade to the petty and disgusting antics of college fraternities, the practitioners of caste-based cruelty acted as if they were proud of it. That people didn’t learn from such carefully documented crimes must have driven history teachers mad on a daily basis, Imani thought. It certainly went a long way toward explaining Mr. Carol.
Imani’s favorite article was about the untouchables, who were the lowbies of India’s caste system, the difference being that they were born into it and there was no way out. One of the ways people justified such caste systems was by asserting a hierarchy of morals. Those on the top were deemed to be of higher moral character than those on the bottom, but it was always the people on top doing the deeming.
Imani saw the pattern in colonial America, as a way of justifying slavery, which was also a two-tier caste system. Africans were judged to be of low moral character and, therefore, unworthy of the same rights and privileges as whites. By going into service for white society, these lowbies could redeem their low moral standing. As with the untouchables, there was no way out. Even emancipated slaves were lower than white citizens, or to put it in her father’s terms, “the man” kept keeping them down.
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